Creating with ADHD
^^ We cover so much in our discussion with Megzie and Diana. We talk about creating while managing ADHD. Burnout, hyperfocus, executive disfunction, organization, and more are covered. This talk is so full of great advice, I whole hearted recommend it to everyone, regardless, of brain make up. This chat will be useful to all.
Hi friends, Sarah D here.
This is the transcribed conversation made via HappyScribe (it’s after the show notes).
We know some people like to read more than listen and vice versa, and we will always try to provide both when we can. HappyScribe is roughly 80% accurate.
Also a huge thanks to our guests:
Megzie
Linktree
and
Diana
Shop • Twitter • Instagram • Website • Nerdification.media
Happy Art Making!
-Sarah
Show Notes:
Where to find the panel:
**Mind Body Artist - https://www.mindbodyartist.com/
**Let's Be Legendary Podcast - https://www.letsbelegendarypodcast.com/
**Nerdification Media Group - https://www.nerdificationmedia.com/
**It Coulda Been Great Podcast - https://www.nerdificationmedia.com/itcouldabeengreat
**Masks & Martyrs Podcast - https://www.nerdificationmedia.com/masks-martyrs (defunct)
Tools/Books:
*How To ADHD - https://www.youtube.com/c/HowtoADHD
**Take What Works (platform?)
**Monday - Organization Tool - https://monday.com/blog
**Do Nothing - book by Celeste Headlee - https://www.amazon.com/Do-Nothing-Overworking-Overdoing-Underliving/dp/1984824759
**The Bullet Journal Method - book by Ryder Carroll - https://www.amazon.com/Bullet-Journal-Method-Present-Design/dp/0525533338
**Pomodoro Technique - https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique
**Discord Servers - As organization tool - https://discord.com/
General tips:
**Self care
**Rest
**Breaking projects into small tasks
**Bullet Journal
**Ask friends and family for help
**Indulge in hyperfocus when able, don't fight it
**If you're able to do multiple tasks without getting distracted, make room for days when hyperfocus is overwhelming
**Set alarms as reminders
**Set hard cutoffs for work and projects (ex. 6pm set aside work day)
**Pass off tasks you can to people who are willing and able
**Set routines
**Set up schedules for things that need to be done
**Set up visual representation of tasks you'd like to do and/or incentivize tasks (Stickers on calendar on desk, notifications on your phone, a whiteboard with tasks written out, set medications where you will see them, make lists, use sticky notes)
**Occasionally move visual aids so they don't become part of the environment
**Auditory cues (Ex. Saying stop out loud to reset your focus)
**Talk out tasks with someone else to figure out your first step if you have trouble starting
**"Sit on" projects you'd like to start by writing them down and then coming back to the idea later
**Realize not everything needs to be perfect
**Realize just showing up is enough
**If a hobby doesn't give you joy, realize it's alright to quit
**If you're burnt out, give yourself space to do other things you do enjoy
**Be willing to try and fail
**Explore aids that you can't monetize to reduce pressure
**Try to remember not to clear notifications on your phone or productivity tool
**Adjust tools to work the way that works for you, take only what works
**Not everything works for everyone
**Have patience with yourself and others
___________________________________
Interview with Megzie and Diana Transcribed Conversation
[00:00] - Speaker 1
Hey, folks, this is Sarah and Maggie and Diana today for mindbodyart.com.
[00:07] - Speaker 4
Com.
[00:08] - Speaker 1
And today we are having a kind of round table discussion about making art while having ADHD. Okay. So I'm Super happy. Thank you so much, megzi and Diana, for joining us today. And Megzi, if you could give, like, kind of a quick intro to yourself and where people can find you online and how they can possibly give you money and support your projects.
[00:28] - Speaker 2
My name is Megzi, and I am one fourth now of the production team behind let's Be Legendary Podcast. We are an actual play five e podcast that is set in a Homebrew, steampunk Wild West setting, and I also illustrate the show and that's about it.
[00:52] - Speaker 4
Awesome. Thank you.
[00:53] - Speaker 1
And Diana, would you mind doing the same thing? Like, kind of who you're at and what you do and how people can support you?
[00:59] - Speaker 3
Yeah, absolutely. I'm Diana avid podcast. Listeners probably don't know me from the podcast. That could have been great and Masks and Martyrs, which was a five B-A-P. Podcast, both of which are now defunct, but I can be found at dianapocalips. Com. I do art, illustration, I do pin design and a little bit of everything. I also run the Notification Media Group, which is kind of a half podcast network, half theater group. And yeah, I'm kind of a little all over the place because I have ADHD, and if I get bored, I'll die.
[01:36] - Speaker 1
Literally fatal.
[01:40] - Speaker 3
Well, that's awesome.
[01:41] - Speaker 1
So it's fantastic that everyone kind of knows what you guys all do, because now we're going to get talking into ADHD and how that impacts what you do and all that good stuff. So we had a bunch of people write questions, and so I was thinking that I'd ask you folks and then you can kind of see how you navigate. So I think I'm the only person here that doesn't have ADHD, so I'm just mostly going to just be asking questions and letting you guys who are the Masters go through it Masters most in August.
[02:15] - Speaker 1
Yeah. I think that's super valuable, though, because you've navigated your entire life without a diagnosis.
[02:24] - Speaker 2
You can also speak to the diagnosis process as an adult, because that's something that I can't speak to because I was diagnosed when I was seven.
[02:33] - Speaker 3
I was diagnosed this year also when I was 29. So we're nailing it.
[02:39] - Speaker 4
Oh, Diana, 29. Sarah 37. How old are we and Maggie a long time ago, and it land far, far away. Yeah.
[02:48] - Speaker 2
Okay.
[02:49] - Speaker 1
So that's a pretty decent spectrum.
[02:51] - Speaker 2
Also, it's snowing here. I want you all to know I already just made a joke.
[02:56] - Speaker 4
She said it was a decent spectrum.
[03:00] - Speaker 1
I didn't even mean to do that.
[03:02] - Speaker 4
This is going to be the most distracted version of this we've ever done, because now you've got three of us. Okay. It's snowing. Apparently not good snowing in Wisconsin. There you go.
[03:13] - Speaker 1
Nice. Okay, so I guess the first question, which is a really big question and super important, is how do you folks manage big and lengthy projects?
[03:25] - Speaker 4
Oh, I think Mike Z should go first on this one.
[03:28] - Speaker 1
Oh, Jesus.
[03:28] - Speaker 4
Okay.
[03:34] - Speaker 2
No, honestly, there are a lot of tools that you can use that are out there that you can utilize to make sure that you stay on task, that you have things that you need to do all set out for you. I can go over some of mine. But I think for those of us with ADHD, I think a big part of it is not getting too down on yourself all the time because we have this tendency of all or nothing. Like I'm either working myself to death or I'm a lady's love.
[04:13] - Speaker 2
And there's not much in between that. And so I think one big thing you can do as someone with ADHD, is to really work to find that middle ground, because self care and rest are so important when you're working on a lengthy project, and I speak as someone who's working on a very lengthy project, I think we're going on four years now. Yeah. Four years of doing our podcast, and all of us have ADHD or autism that's the other thing is that autism and ADHD are very closely linked.
[04:50] - Speaker 2
But one of the hardest things that we've had to do, aside from making sure that scheduling is up to scratch and that deadlines are being met, is making sure that we don't burn out. And so all of the kind of productivity tools in the world, I think they're all great. And it's really important to find out what works for you that's another thing is finding the productivity tool that works for you personally. But the big thing, the biggest thing that I found is finding that middle ground between I'm working myself to burn out and I'm doing absolutely nothing.
[05:31] - Speaker 2
And that is a continuous struggle.
[05:34] - Speaker 4
That's definitely true. And like, I was actually just I read the other day on Facebook. This is Sarah, because I know it's going to get confusing about who's talking. This is not Sarah D. This is the ADHD Sarah. Sarah ADHD Saturday. I was reading a post the other day. You guys probably saw me retweet this, and it was like a couple of years ago. I think it was like three years ago, and I was like, I made 18 bows in the last two days. And now me now I'm looking at that and going, you did nothing else.
[06:02] - Speaker 4
Like you didn't take care of yourself. You probably didn't play with your kid. You weren't hanging out with your family. You didn't do any chores. You sat in your office for, like, 14 hours each of those two days, and all you did was make both. I mean, Congratulations. But are you okay?
[06:19] - Speaker 2
Yeah.
[06:21] - Speaker 4
So I look at that now and it's almost sort of horrifying.
[06:24] - Speaker 2
Yeah. And I think a lot of it has to do with it. I will do my best not to get political here, but I think a big part of it is these ideals of capitalism and how you should always be producing and always be working. And we tend to internalize a lot of our failures to always be producing and always be working because of our tendency toward hyper focus and distraction. And so I think that it's really important to manage those expectations of yourself and realize that, yes, you do deserve to just go play a video game or go watch TV or go for a walk or whatever it is that you do to relax the big reason we do this podcast.
[07:03] - Speaker 2
Yeah.
[07:04] - Speaker 4
Because of that thing that we Diana, what about you and long term stuff? Yeah.
[07:10] - Speaker 3
So I kind of crowdsourced my ability to pay attention to things, which I will explain and break down. This first bit of advice isn't universal. I married somebody who's really organized and good at staying on top of stuff so easy to when she starts doing something, get up and start doing it also. But with long term projects, the longest term when I did, took ten years, and I'm still working on it on and off. Just on the side was Turnabout Musical, which is a musical based on The Phoenix.
[07:45] - Speaker 2
Right.
[07:45] - Speaker 3
Ease of turning gate.
[07:46] - Speaker 2
Cool.
[07:48] - Speaker 3
Yeah. It is three and a half hours long. It's on the Notification Media YouTube channel, and it feels shorter than it is. I promise.
[07:57] - Speaker 2
As musicals tend to.
[07:59]
Yeah.
[08:00] - Speaker 3
I started working on that when I was 16 and finished that production when I was 26. So a lot of that was the fact that that show had hundreds of contributors over the years. So whenever I feel myself lagging, I could lean on the passion and attention of other people. And that's kind of how I approach basically any large long term project. I have always said I'm kind of a collaborator by nature, which I think ties into the fact that I have always had ADHD and didn't know how to manage it before.
[08:31] - Speaker 3
It is very easy for me to do group projects because I see other people getting excited and then I get excited and we kind of create a feedback loop and then I can harness that hyper focus a lot more effectively. Longer term solar projects are hard for me because I don't have really any productivity tools that work for me in particular. Like I've tried Bullet Journaling and apps and calendars and stuff, but my main ADHD management tool is teamwork and friendship.
[09:03] - Speaker 2
I love that.
[09:04] - Speaker 4
That's so beautiful. I'm trying to think of what I've got. I don't know what I've got for it. I think I avoid long term projects at all costs. I think that's my technique because almost everything that I do is like, I can't even think of a long term project that I've ever sustained.
[09:27] - Speaker 2
Honestly, I think that is a legitimate strategy for dealing with long term projects. It's just don't do them. I don't think there's any shame in that at all.
[09:41] - Speaker 4
Like, I've always admired people that can write a comic, for example. And I've always known my whole life I will never be that artist because I make one of a kind hair bows. I make the bow, it exists. It leaves. I never see it again. I think it's so funny to listen to you guys talk about it because I think my approach to long term projects is avoid.
[10:06] - Speaker 2
Yeah.
[10:07] - Speaker 3
Which I mean, that's super valid. But also I wouldn't sell yourself short because your business as a whole, I would count as a long term project for sure. Is it what you would think of it as?
[10:17] - Speaker 4
That's true. I guess I've been modeling for 14 years. That's kind of a long time.
[10:25] - Speaker 2
Long term project.
[10:26] - Speaker 3
You're basically just breaking a long term project in the form of a business into a bunch of short, fun things, which is doing a model doing a bow, doing a photo set, et cetera.
[10:35] - Speaker 4
That's true. I guess that's true.
[10:39] - Speaker 3
You were coping and you didn't even know it.
[10:41] - Speaker 4
Well, that's the whole thing, right?
[10:47] - Speaker 2
Yeah.
[10:47] - Speaker 1
So it's like you work in Sprints.
[10:49] - Speaker 4
I do. I really have to. Yeah, exactly.
[10:52] - Speaker 1
But also, I don't know, there's a ton of merit in making a small, very impactful thing, which is really cool.
[11:00] - Speaker 4
Yeah. I think if someone's trying to figure out how they're going to manage a long term project, like, say something like a podcast or a comic or whatever. I guess from everything we've said, we're kind of condensing it down to give it baby bites. I mean, everyone advises you. That right. Like everyone says, oh, and you got to do a big project. You got to think of it in smaller steps. But if you're ADHD, they might have to be even smaller. Yeah.
[11:24] - Speaker 2
It's not like, oh, do the design.
[11:27] - Speaker 4
It's like no break that down. Like, even more.
[11:34] - Speaker 2
The other thing I think that's really important for long term projects to learn is patience, not just with yourself, but also with the feedback you're going to get, because we as people with ADHD, kind of live off of feedback in some way or another. And, like with doing a long term project, like a podcast or a comic. And while you're in the beginning stages while you're building your audience, you're not going to get the feedback that you need immediately. And I think that's why a lot of us burn out at the beginning because we're not getting that feedback that we need.
[12:05] - Speaker 2
And there's also this. I said I wasn't going to get political, but here we are. There is also this kind of cultural idea of if you're doing it for external validation, then it's not valid, which I think is really damaging to those of us that are neuro divergent and so many people that are artists are neuro divergent. And so I think that's a reason why people burn out before they've even started. And so finding a way to build that patience of, like, you have to put in a lot of time and effort without feedback in order to get the feedback that you want can be really difficult.
[12:42] - Speaker 2
And so if you can learn to kind of overcome that, and it is not easy, we still struggle with it. All of us do let's be legendary. And it's invaluable if you can find a way to muscle through it or cope with it.
[12:56] - Speaker 4
Because that makes me feel really helpful, because when you guys first started, I remember you sent me a message and you're like, hey, do you want to listen to our DND thing? And I was like, I have zero interest in DND, but you are my friend, and I'm going to listen to this thing. And then I was like, Guys, you have to listen to this thing. It's so cool.
[13:14] - Speaker 2
I think we were in season two or three, and I messaged you, and I was like, I cannot impress upon you how valuable that was so high.
[13:22] - Speaker 4
I was so excited.
[13:24] - Speaker 2
I do not know if we would be where we are today if you hadn't been giving us the feedback that you were giving us because it was just enough to be like, okay, there's somebody listening. There's somebody here and she really likes what we're doing. Okay, we can keep going.
[13:43] - Speaker 4
That's an idea, right? If you've got a project you want to start and you need to sustain yourself.
[13:47] - Speaker 1
You need a cheerleader.
[13:49] - Speaker 4
You do you need that one friend that's going to be like, I am listening and watching. And I am hype.
[13:57] - Speaker 2
And it can also serve that to get that feedback loop. Or at least it can for me if you can be that cheerleader, because then, like Diana was saying, you get that kind of teamwork and collaboration and leaning on each other to get hype about something you're doing or something someone's making. So if you can hook your brain into that, that can be really valuable. And that can be a way that you get the dopamine that your brain isn't making or isn't managing that you need so badly.
[14:24] - Speaker 4
I just had a chat with a couple of artists because Deviant had me on for a panel about Monetizing art, and it's going to be up on the 17th, which is way long after anyone's going to hear this. So they'll have to go back and look for it. But we were talking about that, like how it's always such a slow burn. And I think for regular people, I guess maybe they just understand that it's going to be like that it takes a while to build a thing.
[14:52] - Speaker 4
But I feel like with me, it's like somebody just said earlier. It's like, I need validation. It's like my whole life I've lived this way where I need people to tell me good job. And so when I started modeling and I put it all my stuff up and BV and I was like, this is all trash and put it all in my scraps, I was like, I quit. I'm not going to do this anymore because it's not good enough. And I'm not even going to try.
[15:16] - Speaker 4
And my friends were like, no, it is good. They don't know what they're talking about. Just try harder. Just be louder. And so I kept doing it because my friends pushed me. If no one had said, Fuck them, just do what you want. I'd have given up.
[15:34] - Speaker 3
Where would I get my reference images?
[15:37] - Speaker 4
I regularly give up when things are hard. Having those chileters is great. We've been talking about this one thing for a while. Sorry. What's the next thing I'm moving us on?
[15:51] - Speaker 1
Yes, I like this team work. So the next topic, and I think I'm going to combine a couple of questions because there's a lot of things that deal with hyper focus and all the nuance around it. So sort of like if you're hyper focused, how do you make sure that you take time for self care or how do you make sure that you take time for life tasks like laundry and cooking food? And, you know, I don't know, walking the dog or whatever, that sort of thing.
[16:20] - Speaker 1
So yeah, if you're in hyper focus mode, how do you deal?
[16:29] - Speaker 2
I indulge mine honestly, and it's easier for me. I think this is one of those things where everybody is going to have a different approach to how to deal with hyper focus, and it's very important to realize how best to deal with yours. But if I try to push against the current with my hyper focus, I'm going to just fall over and get and drown. And so it's easier to go with the wave and just indulge it enough that I can satisfy whatever I'm hyper focusing on and then also have time and focus for things that I need to do.
[17:07] - Speaker 2
Also, I think that we as narrow, divergent people are going to whatever productivity tool works for us.
[17:14] - Speaker 4
We'Re going to be like.
[17:15] - Speaker 2
This is the way this is the one to use, because this one works super well. And so for me, it's bullet journaling, and I make my bullet Journal really pretty so that I don't just give up on it and throw it away because I needed to be to look a certain way for me to actually want to write in it. I also do Pomodoros, which is a productivity tool where you do something that you focus on something really hard for 25 minutes, then take five minutes or ten minutes to just get distracted and then go back for 25 minutes.
[17:48] - Speaker 2
You do four of those. So it's like a two hour focus block, and then you take a half hour an hour break and do whatever you want. And so a lot of times if I'm hyper focusing on something that I'm not supposed to be doing, like, I don't know, animal crossing. Let's just say animal crossing.
[18:06] - Speaker 3
Random example that has no relevance to anything.
[18:09] - Speaker 2
Exactly. So if I'm a fight hyper focusing on animal crossing and I need to do my homework and I need to do the dishes and I have chores to do. And I have other stuff that I have podcast work that I need to do. I will say, like, okay, I'm going to do X amount of pomodoros, or I'm going to just track my time with Pomodoros and make sure that I get my stuff that I need to do finished. But during those breaks, I'm going to be playing animal crossing, and when I'm all done with that, I'm going to be playing animal crossing, so I indulge it where I can while making sure I still get my things done.
[18:48] - Speaker 2
It doesn't always work. Sometimes there are days where it's like, I am trying. I'm using every productivity tool in my Arsenal. It's not working. Today is just a bust.
[19:00] - Speaker 4
And I'm just going to play animal crashing.
[19:02] - Speaker 2
Yeah, that was yesterday. And for me, it's important for me to stay on task most of the time when I have kind of the mental fortitude to do so. So that when I don't have the mental fortitude to do so I can be like, okay, it's a no bones day. We're just going to play animal crossing. Homework can wait. We have everything done that we need to get done today immediately. We just don't have the mental capacity to focus. We're just going to indulge hyperfocus. And most of the time, I have made the space to do that.
[19:39] - Speaker 2
So that's how I deal with it.
[19:41] - Speaker 4
What about you, Diana?
[19:42] - Speaker 1
I have one question on that one because super interesting. Do you find that if you don't push against the wave, it's just easier, like it comes and goes quicker, or it comes and goes in less of a painful because that sounds a lot like I have anxiety. So it sounds a soul that's like if you're not constantly being like, I don't want to have anxiety right now, it's easier. So if you're kind of like, I don't want to hyper focus right now, but you're just like, that's harder.
[20:08] - Speaker 1
You know, what I'm trying to say is that making sense?
[20:10] - Speaker 2
Yeah. It definitely indulging it for me. Definitely makes it less daunting, I guess, and less all encompassing and all consuming. I feel like if the more I resist it, the worse it's going to get.
[20:30] - Speaker 4
The wave gets bigger.
[20:32] - Speaker 2
Yeah.
[20:32] - Speaker 3
I feel like the more you resist it. In a lot of cases, it creates that's when you get into your executive dysfunction, right? When it's like, well, I am going to force myself not to play Animal crossing, and now I will sit here and do nothing and think about the things I should be doing instead.
[20:49] - Speaker 2
And I'm going to do absolutely nothing, but at least it's not animal crossing.
[20:53] - Speaker 3
Yeah, it's like you're taking a fucking I'm sorry. A freaking.
[21:01] - Speaker 1
This is for adults. It's fine. You can swear.
[21:03] - Speaker 3
Okay, cool. You're taking a sledgehammer to the brick wall. That is your hyper focus, and then you tire yourself out breaking it down, as opposed to finding ways to go around. It is a way that there's an ADHD YouTuber. I can't remember the name of her channel right now.
[21:20] - Speaker 2
How to ADHD yes.
[21:21] - Speaker 3
How to ADHD has a video about how to get over brick walls, how to get over bridges and stuff, and you can try to force through it, but it's not going to be sustainable long term. You can maybe do that a couple of times, but eventually it becomes a maladaptive technique. So sometimes just letting it happen and accepting it as part of who you are is good. That's actually a dialectical behavioral therapy technique. The anxiety wasn't mentioned as well, which is commonly referred to as DBT, so sometimes just not fighting yourself is good.
[21:59] - Speaker 3
In my case, it is also teamwork, though I have identified the household tasks. I am bad at which specifically is like laundry, because that is a multi step task over the course of hours. So I have a whiteboard on the fridge where I can write if there is something in the wash, and then if I forget to move it, my wife will see it and she'll do it.
[22:26] - Speaker 2
You try it out.
[22:28] - Speaker 4
I set alarms. Laundry is one of my laundry is actually one of my favorite chores, and I think it's because it's like almost it's low participation versus clean the kitchen.
[22:40] - Speaker 2
Right?
[22:41] - Speaker 4
That's something I have to do. That's like a sustained effort. But laundry. I can put it in and literally forget about it for an hour until it goes Ding. And then I'm like, oh, the laundry. And then I go do it for five minutes and then I forget about it until it goes Ding.
[22:55] - Speaker 2
So I love it.
[22:57] - Speaker 3
That's so interesting, because I'm the exact opposite. If I'm doing a task that I find engaging, like cleaning a whole room, I don't really have trouble doing that, but when it comes to passive tasks and stuff.
[23:08] - Speaker 4
My particular ADHD experience is the exact opposite of yours and see the sustained tasks I can only do at eleven, so I can't go clean the kitchen a little bit. I like bomb clean the kitchen, and it's all I do for, like, an hour and usually with, like, loud music and possibly when I'm angry. That's how cleaning gets done. It gets done in a fell swoop explosion.
[23:37] - Speaker 3
Yeah, I definitely get into that mode as well.
[23:42] - Speaker 4
And one thing I think that's interesting is that mixie that was me.
[23:45] - Speaker 2
But you go ahead. Well, yeah.
[23:46] - Speaker 4
Let me say this before I forget listening to you guys talk about this has made me realize something about myself, which I sort of subconsciously known for a little while. But this has really honed it in because of my tendency to hyper focus. I don't do other things. So my way to deal with hyper focus is that I just make my art and I avoid all other indulgences. So, for example, when I started playing Animal Crossing, I waited probably four months after my family was playing to start playing.
[24:19] - Speaker 4
And then that's all I did for, like, two weeks. When I used to occasionally read a physical book, I would put off starting a book because once I start the book, I don't do anything else Besides read that book. I don't work, I don't clean, I don't take care of myself, I don't shower. So I think it's interesting because listening to this, I'm going, oh, so what I do is I deny myself the other things that I enjoy knowing that I can't moderate them.
[24:47] - Speaker 3
That's really interesting.
[24:48] - Speaker 2
And I'm like, Well, fuck you're. Also creating a space where you can hyper focus because waiting to play Animal Crossing until everyone else had kind of been done with it, you've created a space to be able to hyper focus. And like, if you're reading a book, you know that you're just going to hyper focus on that book and nothing else. And so you create space in order to do that. And that I think is also a valuable tool to contend with hyperfocus is creating temporal space to hyperfocus.
[25:21] - Speaker 4
That's what I've been trying to do now is because now that I've realized I've solely sort of been realizing, like, I do actually want to play Animal Crossing, I'm not letting myself do it because I'm going to get so into it that I stopped doing everything else. So now what I'm really trying really hard to do is I'm really trying to have good, focused time during the day where I'm working and getting things done that I need to do. I'm also at the point in my life where I can outsource some of the stuff in my business that I don't like to do, which is making me feel more okay with saying, all right, it's Tuesday night.
[25:58] - Speaker 4
I just got my kid in bed. I could go work for another hour or two, but I could also just sit on the couch and play Animal Crossing, and that's okay.
[26:04] - Speaker 3
Yeah, which is good. And scheduling that time for self care is very helpful and important, just like I have a hard cut off of. 05:00 p.m., which is also when my regular job ends. But I work at home. And so I'm always multitasking because if I tried to just read my email all day, I would die. But having a hard cut off of. 05:00, I'm like, okay, I'm not doing anything else productive after that. And I leave that space for myself. Another strategy is just making self care easy, like putting all of the things I need, like meds and always having water on my desk and making sure that I see it and remember to do self care tasks is another strategy I wanted to bring up while I was here talking.
[26:52] - Speaker 2
What I was going to say earlier was going back to the idea of teamwork and how you were saying how there are tasks you really don't like doing, and so you will hand it off to your wife if you've forgotten or gotten distracted. Diversifying your household's abilities to do things is really great if you can manage it. My wife and I have completely different approaches to things, and I think it really helps because it forces us to compromise and not just do things exactly the way that we would want to do them.
[27:27] - Speaker 2
I'm very good at the abstract and planning things in the abstract. I'm good at figuring out what needs to get done as far as podcasting goes and as far as things like finances and figuring all that out. But if you're like, okay, now we need to clean the kitchen. I'll just stare at it because I'm so bad in physical space, but they're really good in physical space, but they have real hard trouble with abstract concepts. So being to diversify that kind of ability pool if you can do it can be a really great way to maintain productivity in all aspects of one's life.
[28:13] - Speaker 4
We're all in relationships. So we all have that, like person. Having somebody on your team that you can count on is such a big boon.
[28:25] - Speaker 3
Mental health from a community perspective has been such a healing experience for me. And partially, this is because everyone in my social circle is neuro divergent in some way at this point, probably because those who are not can't stand me after a while. But yeah, just approaching things from a like. Okay, well, I'm allowed to delegate. I'm allowed to in like, Sarah, your case, you have hired a company that does things that you don't like for your business or yeah.
[28:58] - Speaker 4
Multiple at this point.
[28:59] - Speaker 3
It'S the best, but you're allowed to do that. And we have a very individualistic society in America. That's just how we look at things. Allowing yourself to look at stuff from a more community collectivist mindset is something that can be really powerful in managing things like ADHD, because like you said, people have different skill sets and no one is supposed to be able to do everything. Humans formed communities back in the Neolithic era because that is the basis of being human is everyone has their own thing and we make communities to make each other stronger.
[29:34] - Speaker 3
So not to sound like too much of a Marxist on Main.
[29:37] - Speaker 4
But Diana, I got to say that brings something interesting up because I will not name the person, but I have had a person tell me straight up to me. If you're outsourcing parts of your business, then you aren't cut out to run a business. And I'm like, okay, number one, I am not like, a social media marketing person. I'm not educated in it. I'm not trained in it. Everything I've learned from it is like, stuff I've learned on the fly. That kind of works.
[30:09] - Speaker 2
Youtube tutorials.
[30:11] - Speaker 4
Yeah, and I am also not a financial manager. I'm not a bookkeeper. Everything I've learned I've learned from, like, trial and error. Why on Earth?
[30:19] - Speaker 2
And I don't enjoy it at all.
[30:23] - Speaker 4
Why would I not spend money to let somebody else?
[30:29] - Speaker 2
I know people have jobs.
[30:31] - Speaker 3
I'm going to walk into the next Walmart it, and I'm going to take a video and be like, look at Sam Walton being lazy and hiring all these people.
[30:41] - Speaker 2
He's not making all of these products himself in his basement. What a dealer.
[30:46] - Speaker 4
It was such a weird. I was not expecting it. It was a very strange accusation. I was like, you know what? I actually am not a business owner. I'm just an artist who happens to have a business that she doesn't actually want to run.
[31:03] - Speaker 3
That's such a toxic mindset that rise and grind entrepreneur Twitter mindset that gets into people's heads. And it's like, no, you can't do things. It's not sustainable.
[31:18] - Speaker 2
Like you were saying, we are a social species for a reason.
[31:24] - Speaker 3
That's why we're good at stuff. We built society because that's what we're good at and how we exist. That's just what humans do.
[31:32] - Speaker 2
We deal with hyper focus.
[31:35] - Speaker 3
Sorry.
[31:36] - Speaker 2
So that's how we deal with hyper.
[31:38] - Speaker 1
Oh, there is one that talks about hyper focus, but I think it's like a little bit of a nuanced one, but I'll let you guys know and then let me know if you think you already answered it. So it says, finding balance between intense obsessive hyper focus on creativity while neglecting life tasks versus getting our lives together to avoid creating.
[32:01] - Speaker 4
I bounced violently back and forth between make art all the time and, oh, crap. I haven't walked in, like, a week and a half. My stuff is very simple. I have a calendar. Every time I walk, I get a sticker. The calendar is on my desk. I can see it. So if I go a couple of days and I haven't walked, I see the calendar and think, Gosh, I haven't walked in a couple of days. I better do that. It's very easy for me to be like, You're too busy to walk.
[32:28] - Speaker 4
You have to work. But doing this podcast at Sarad has helped me be like, no, you need to prioritize your mental health, too, and your mental health requires you do some exercise.
[32:40] - Speaker 3
Yeah, my calendar, in that sense, is Pokemon Go.
[32:45] - Speaker 4
Oh, yeah.
[32:47] - Speaker 3
I haven't caught Pokemon in a few days, and I keep getting notifications from the app that there's an event going on. I guess I have to go to the park now because the Pokemon needs me.
[32:55] - Speaker 4
For me, it's like malicious forced compliance. Like, I just do it, Sarah, do it now or I'll be mad at you and you're me. So do it.
[33:06] - Speaker 3
Fighting your shadow self.
[33:10] - Speaker 2
Also, like you're saying, every time you walk, you get a sticker. And if you can incentivize yourself to do stuff like that, even if it's just like, I get to put a sticker down, I get a sticker now, that can also really help trying to keep yourself on task.
[33:28] - Speaker 3
Absolutely.
[33:29] - Speaker 4
You know what else I do on my walk?
[33:31] - Speaker 2
What?
[33:32] - Speaker 4
I listen to my favorite adventure Lesbian DND podcast.
[33:40]
Synergy.
[33:42] - Speaker 4
That is a big incentive for me because I won't listen to it unless I go for a walk and I want to listen to it. So sometimes I'm like, oh, I haven't listened to the story. I'm like, four episodes behind Jeez. I better go for a really long walk.
[33:58] - Speaker 2
Yeah. I don't know if that quite answers the question. It is really nuanced. And like, the answer is it's fucking hard. Yeah. That's another thing is that I'm really critical of a lot of ADHD support material online because I think a lot of it kind of learned leads. It can lead to learn helplessness. And I think one thing that we as ADHD people. One of the hardest lessons we have to learn is that everything is going to be harder for us, and it sucks. But that's just the way it is.
[34:38] - Speaker 2
The society is not built to cater to the way our brains work. And so things are going to be twice as hard.
[34:45] - Speaker 4
She knows all about this because she's left handed.
[34:50] - Speaker 2
I was left handed, and then Catholic school happened.
[34:54] - Speaker 1
I was raised Catholic, but I didn't go to Catholic school, so fortunately, I have both hands.
[35:01] - Speaker 3
Devil's hand.
[35:02] - Speaker 4
Yeah. Devil hand going back to what Meghan was saying because I totally interrupted her.
[35:08] - Speaker 2
That's okay. No, I was basically done. Is that the idea of that? It's a hard truth to learn. But once you accept it, then you can find ways to make things not so hard. But you have to accept that everything is going to be harder. And that's okay.
[35:27] - Speaker 3
You have to give up the illusion that you have control over every aspect of your brain in your life. And just positive thinking will make it go away. Like, no, it will be harder. And that's going to suck sometimes, but there are ways to deal with it.
[35:40] - Speaker 2
Exactly.
[35:43] - Speaker 4
All right.
[35:44] - Speaker 1
So this next bunch of questions, I think all sort of related to executive dysfunction. This is my favorite, right? It's kind of like tips for breaking through executive dysfunction or sort of things like when I go to schedule out posts and do marketing and sales, I get overwhelmed, and then I get frozen or lost in the process things of that nature. So could you folks talk about executive dysfunction and what you do for it cry.
[36:17] - Speaker 2
I tend to brute force myself out of it.
[36:21] - Speaker 4
I shouldn't say that.
[36:22] - Speaker 2
It depends on what I'm being dysfunctional about. If I'm finding myself, like, if it's something very simple, like I'm supposed to go to sleep, and I'm still here scrolling on my phone through Twitter, and I'm not actually doing anything. I'm just continuing to scroll because that's what I'm doing, and I don't want to go to sleep because that's something different than what I'm doing right at this exact moment. I will literally say out loud, stop, because for me, that auditory queue is, like, right, I can put my phone away and go to sleep.
[36:55] - Speaker 4
The other night. I did that. I turned off. I like, rage quit my phone. So I realized I was doing it, and I just had to go to bed. I turned my phone off, which means my alarm did not go off the next morning.
[37:07] - Speaker 2
You raised quit so hard. You also quit waking up. But, yeah, it depends. So that's how I deal with executive dysfunction on a small scale, on a larger scale, like having a bunch of tasks to do and getting overwhelmed, like, overwhelm for me, because I'm also autistic is really one of the biggest pitfalls is overwhelm. And for me, the way I deal with it is, first of all, badly, because I'm basically always overwhelmed in some capacity or another, but also just breaking things into smaller chunks the way that we were talking about earlier and just taking it one step at a time and forcing.
[37:51] - Speaker 2
I guess this goes back to that brute force, but like, forcing yourself, just take one step at a time, and it's okay. If you don't get all of it done, just get some of it done. Then take it one tiny little step at a time.
[38:05] - Speaker 4
I 100% do that thing. Where what's it called it's like, Task piling. So you have to do X. And then you realize that while you're doing X, you could also do YZ. Now it becomes XYZ. And that's a big project, and all of a sudden it's like, oh, I have to do X-Y-Z. That's going to take so much effort and time and energy. Oh, my God. All you have to do is X. But you've worked it up into this big thing. So, like, realizing, no, all I have to do is X.
[38:37] - Speaker 4
And then just doing X, like, for example, the toilet needs to get cleaned. And you're like, Well, if I'm going to bring up stuff to clean the toilet, I might as well clean the sink and the tub. And I might as well dust the floor, mop or whatever. And it's like, you just have to just clean the toilet. Just do the toilet. Do the toilet.
[38:54]
Yeah.
[38:56] - Speaker 4
Now that I know that I do it, I can see it. It doesn't make it easier to not do it, but it does make it easier to be like, you're doing the thing.
[39:05] - Speaker 3
You don't have to Minimax everything. Like, you're playing a JRPG.
[39:09] - Speaker 4
Yeah. For me, my biggest one is when I have to do a photo shoot for a client. When I have to do a patron request, I'm going to get in my outfit. I'm going to go in the studio. I'm going to set up the lights. I might as well do a stock shoot, like a whole shoot. No. All I have to do is take one photo. I don't even have to set up a big camera. I can use my phone.
[39:27] - Speaker 2
It's good enough.
[39:28] - Speaker 4
So, like letting myself just chill. Just do the basic thing required.
[39:35] - Speaker 2
There is a push to kind of min Max your time and effort.
[39:38] - Speaker 4
Because time is money, baby. Yeah.
[39:42] - Speaker 2
And also for me, it goes back to that always trying to create space for when I don't have the emotional or mental wherewithal to do stuff. So it's like, oh, I've got a multitask right now and get as much done as I can while I've got the mental fortitude. And it goes back again to that whole idea of moderation. And it's not all or nothing. And, oh, it's hard. It sucks. It sucks so bad, but it's really valuable to be able to remind yourself, I just have to take one picture.
[40:12] - Speaker 2
I just have to clean the toilet. I just have to take the garbage out. Like, just allow yourself to not be as productive as you could be. It's okay. You'll get everything done. Oh, you'll get most things done. It's fine. Just chill out and play some animal crossing.
[40:32] - Speaker 4
What was the question again?
[40:34] - Speaker 3
How to break through executive function.
[40:36] - Speaker 4
Okay, Diana.
[40:39] - Speaker 3
Yeah. In my case, I'm going to introduce a metaphor that will make sense later.
[40:45] - Speaker 2
But I kind of think we're ADHD. We love metaphors.
[40:48] - Speaker 3
Yeah, I think of kind of my executive functioning ability per day. Kind of like a spoon theory thing, but I think of it because I'm a dork more like Mana points or spell points, or I think of it in JRPG terms.
[41:05] - Speaker 2
Certification is a legitimate strategy for doing things.
[41:08] - Speaker 3
Yeah. And so one way that I can conserve points. Basically, throughout the day, I have to use executive function to do all of these different things. Like get up, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, whatever every single thing requires it. But to bring down the Mana cost of every item, one thing I do a lot is routines. I don't want to think about what I have to eat for breakfast, so I eat basically the same thing every day. Yeah, that's how I ended up eating a giant chocolate chip muffin every morning.
[41:42] - Speaker 3
For two years, I had two hot dogs.
[41:45] - Speaker 4
Brownie Anna soda every day for lunch for entirety four years of high school because it was.
[41:51] - Speaker 3
Yeah. When I was in high school, I eat baloney sandwich every single day of my life because I didn't want to think about anything else. Picking out a routine, like, if I had to go to Starbucks every morning, and I didn't have an unusual order because I don't drink coffee. But the idea of being a person who goes to Starbucks and has to choose from that menu is mentally exhausting for me. So simplifying stuff is really important and making routines of, like, okay, this is what I do for breakfast.
[42:19] - Speaker 3
And then when I wake up, I brush my teeth and then I'm on autopilot for, like, an hour. And I don't have to use my executive functioning skills until magazine.
[42:28] - Speaker 4
Are you same food?
[42:30] - Speaker 2
Oh, God, yeah, we might get into this later, but like, food preparation. I have an instant pot, and I Cook like, everything in it. So I make just huge batches of, like, chili. And I'll eat nothing but chili for, like, two weeks because you can make just huge batches in the instant pot. Right now, my same food is chilly, and that's why I brought it up because I'm really looking forward to chili in, like, an hour. Same Fooding. My middle school lunch every day was an egg bagel with cream cheese and a strawberry Kiwi Snapple.
[43:08] - Speaker 2
That was like, every day in middle school.
[43:11] - Speaker 4
It's so funny, and we're going to have to plug the mind body artist because Sarah has been doing a lot of stuff with meal prep, too, because I know that it might not be ADHD, but she doesn't want to spend time making food. She just wants the food to be there. And that's more of a productivity thing for her. But my ADHD brain is like, yeah, same food.
[43:31] - Speaker 1
I know what to expect.
[43:32] - Speaker 4
I'm ready for it. My husband will occasionally complain like, oh, we always eat the same things all the time, and I'm like, Listen.
[43:38] - Speaker 3
Unless you do something about that.
[43:40] - Speaker 4
It'S not going to change.
[43:46] - Speaker 3
It takes a lot of mental energy. So the more stuff that you can basically train your brain to automate, the better. In my experience, we feed our cats at the exact same times every day. And this was something I negotiated with. My wife not negotiate, but we talked it out because she was like, hey, I feel like I'm always feeding the cats, and I'm like it's because I don't know when you're doing it. I don't notice that you leave the room to go do that. And also I lose track of time when I'm at work.
[44:11] - Speaker 3
So I need to know exactly when we're going to do that. And then basically, my brain is on autopilot from when I get up at seven until noon when it's time to eat lunch because I have everything scheduled, and I do it the same way every day. And it's great. Just don't have to think. And that leaves a lot more space in my brain for executive functioning skills that I struggle with normally. And the good news about having my wife be so supportive is that whenever I do get stuck, which is just kind of how we phrase I'm like, hey, I am stuck right now, and I need to do X and we'll talk it out and figure out what the first step is, because that's usually my problem is when you're overwhelmed with a task that has several steps to it.
[44:55] - Speaker 3
Or, like, when I have a chain of tasks that aren't necessarily related. But I know I need to do them in a certain order. Like, oh, I need to pay the bills, make the bed, do my laundry, and such be like, okay, this is what I need to get done, but I don't know how to take the first step, and we talk through it until I know how to do that. And you can do that with, like, a friend or even you can have pretend conversations with your cat, probably and get through it.
[45:23] - Speaker 3
You just need to reason out. Okay, what's the first thing I need to do? And then once I get started, I'm usually pretty good at just Rube Goldberging my way through a task.
[45:34] - Speaker 4
My self care and house care stuff does a lot better. I definitely am like, oh, I'm doing really good keeping up with my work, or I'm doing really good keeping up with my chores. It's like one or the other. But the times when I have a good balance, it's almost always because I've plopped it into some kind of routine. So, like, I finished dinner. I put my bowl away in the sink. I go scoop the cat litter. Those two tasks are not inherently related. No one associates finish dinner, scoop cat poop like, that's not like a thing, but for me, they're inherently linked.
[46:10] - Speaker 4
It's a thing that happens. I put my dish away, I scooped the cat litter, and so they go together. So in my brain, it's never, like, have I scooped the cat litter because I finished dinner. And then I scooped the cat dinner because I eat dinner every day, so it gets done every day.
[46:29] - Speaker 2
And so sometimes does it not get done right?
[46:31] - Speaker 4
Because I put my dish away, and then my kid asks for a drink, and then I get distracted, and then I have the animal crossing. Does it sometimes not get done? Sure. But the vast majority of days I hit that note.
[46:44] - Speaker 3
Yeah, and that's all you need. You just need to be mostly good at existing. We don't no need to be straight A students. You can rock a C minus and still live a perfectly happy life. It's fine.
[46:58] - Speaker 2
I'm getting a C in one of my classes right now, and it's really hard, and I'm like, you know what good enough C is good.
[47:06] - Speaker 3
That's passing that's average. That is perfectly acceptable. I learned a lot flunking physics that taught me more about myself and resilience than anything was being an honor student until College and then getting 20s on tests because I was so bad at a subject. I really wanted to be good at give yourself space to just be average at stuff. It's great.
[47:32] - Speaker 4
Again.
[47:32] - Speaker 2
It's all or nothing. I'm either a straight A student or I'm a failure. I get that being able to be like, hey, I got a C. I'm getting a C in Cisco networking. Cisco networking really sucks, and my brain doesn't like it, and I don't get it. So, hey, a C is a win.
[47:49] - Speaker 4
I just recently gave myself a C in parenting.
[47:52] - Speaker 2
I said, I'm about an eight.
[47:54] - Speaker 4
Eight out of ten.
[47:56] - Speaker 2
I feel like that's pretty good.
[47:58] - Speaker 4
I mean, it's hard, just like A-B-C.
[48:01] - Speaker 2
So you're doing great?
[48:02] - Speaker 4
Yeah, exactly. It's fine. Yeah.
[48:06] - Speaker 3
Learning not to bring 100% to literally everything has saved my bacon many times.
[48:12] - Speaker 1
I really like that, too. I'm a really big perfectionist, which is not good.
[48:18] - Speaker 4
Yes, you are.
[48:21] - Speaker 1
I've been working on that one.
[48:22] - Speaker 4
It's hard.
[48:24] - Speaker 3
The website Gaia online from ancient internet time.
[48:27] - Speaker 2
Oh, my God.
[48:28] - Speaker 3
Had a T shirt called The Wing in its shirt, and the little description of it was sometimes half assing. It is better than doing nothing at all. And I read that when I was eleven years old and it stuck on my heart like a tattoo. Showing up is enough in a lot of cases.
[48:46] - Speaker 1
That is actually going to be an entire episode. Doing it like, half is better than not doing it at all or something like that. Yeah.
[48:57] - Speaker 2
There's a famous quote by someone that turned out to be a gross person. So I'm not going to say who said it, but 80% of success is showing up. So if you show up, you'll probably be fine.
[49:08] - Speaker 3
Yeah, just put in some effort to be there and do the thing. And this is a good functioning, too. Like we were saying earlier, you don't have to Minimax every interaction you have with the world.
[49:22] - Speaker 4
Yeah, we feel like we have to.
[49:23] - Speaker 3
And it's like, no, you can actually just kind of wing it and it works out.
[49:31] - Speaker 2
You can just show up to Cisco networking class and sit in the back and just kind of half listen, and you'll be fine.
[49:37] - Speaker 3
No one's going to ask you in five years.
[49:39] - Speaker 4
Hey.
[49:39] - Speaker 3
So Cisco Networking. I see you have a C on your transcript. Tell me more about that. No one cares.
[49:45] - Speaker 4
We're not putting you in that.
[49:47] - Speaker 2
I'm for administration. What do you care?
[49:50] - Speaker 1
Yeah.
[49:51] - Speaker 3
So it's fine to just show up.
[49:55] - Speaker 4
I got to work on this with my kid right now because she has definitely got those perfectionist tendencies where if she's not immediately good at it, then like, why she does dance class. And when she first started, she was like, I can't do anything. I'm terrible at this. Now she's been practicing. She's getting good at things, and now she's like.
[50:14] - Speaker 1
Look at what I can do.
[50:15] - Speaker 4
This is amazing. And it's like, it's so good for her confidence. Now, whenever she's trying to do something and it's hard I can be like, well, could you do a bridge when you first started doing it? No, but now you can do a mean bridge. Like, it's amazing. You're like, 3ft off the air, like off the ground. How are you that bendy?
[50:36] - Speaker 3
I cannot stress enough how important it is for kids, especially to just do things that they suck at and get better or don't get better. Like, I'm asthmatic. And so I was always bad at everything physical. I am still very uncoordinated and out of shape because I have asthma, and that's just my life. And there is a great freedom in learning how to fail and enjoy it. That's also a good DMV skill to have bad roles.
[51:07] - Speaker 2
Sometimes bad roles make for the best gaming experience.
[51:11] - Speaker 3
That's true in life, too. I'm an incredibly clumsy person. I am very Spacey, and it has become something that my friends think is charming and fun about me. Most of the time.
[51:23] - Speaker 4
I feel like Sarah Dee is the Queen of bad roles ended up being great. I feel like that's like a motif for you, Sarah. Yeah.
[51:34] - Speaker 1
I've got knocked down a few times.
[51:37] - Speaker 3
Just nice that you get back up with, like, 50% effort. It's fine. Don't worry about it.
[51:41] - Speaker 1
You're just going to claw your way out of things.
[51:44] - Speaker 2
Yeah.
[51:46] - Speaker 1
So this next topic we have is I think it's a little bit related. It's a good segue burnout. How do you handle burnout again?
[51:59] - Speaker 2
Badly. It sucks, but you have to be gentle with yourself and realizing I'm in burnout. I can't really do anything right now, and I can't really do much about it. I just have to wait it out and it sucks. It sucks. So bad.
[52:23] - Speaker 4
My rage quit.
[52:25] - Speaker 2
Yeah.
[52:26] - Speaker 4
Actually, you guys are making me realize so much about my life. When I got burned out on, like, Chibi commissions and plushmaking, I quit, so I just stopped doing it. I don't know if I recommend that. I know that for some people, the thing they're burning out on is like health care and chores and things that they can't just stop doing. But that was what happened. I got so overwhelmed and so burnt out on that style of art that I stopped doing it and started doing something else completely.
[53:03] - Speaker 4
I'm not advocating for that.
[53:04] - Speaker 3
But it worked sometimes it's totally fine to quit doing something that's not bringing you joy. Obviously, you can't do that with everything if the thing you're burnt out on is something like taking care of yourself.
[53:16] - Speaker 4
Obviously, that will create larger problems or taking care of someone else, which is a big burnout.
[53:23] - Speaker 2
Like a small human.
[53:24] - Speaker 3
Yeah. Like, caregiver burnout is a huge thing both in health care and in parenting, but giving yourself space to quit. I don't think there's anything wrong with that when it's applicable.
[53:36] - Speaker 2
Yeah.
[53:37] - Speaker 3
I think that can be very healthy to do. In my case, there's a scene in Kiki's delivery service where Kiki is dealing with Burnout, and she goes to the artist lady in the Woods, which is the Lady I aspire to be in the future. No, we all eccentric lesbian artist, bisexual but eccentric artist living in the Woods with her friends. Yes. And she's like, Well, what do you do when you're burnt out on painting? She's like, I just don't do it for a while. And I just do other stuff.
[54:06] - Speaker 3
And basically it boils down to she just does self care. She goes for long walks. She goes swimming, she makes big meals.
[54:14] - Speaker 4
But not as aggressively.
[54:16] - Speaker 3
Yeah, but just if you're burnt out, like, I burn out on my art fairly routinely at this point, like, every couple of months, I realized, oh, crap. I went too hard, and now I can't make anything. I just do other stuff. I go play Animal Crossing for a while or just relax and don't create for a bit or go, like, back to music or piano. And then eventually the burnout will wear off. I just get really comfortable with being uncomfortable with it, and eventually it goes away on its own.
[54:48] - Speaker 3
It's just a cycle of rest. And burnout is when you ignore the signs of the cycle of rest coming on and try to power through and over tax yourself, which can be for a lot of reasons can be for financial reasons. Like, oh, I need to keep making chubby commissions and making plushies, because that's how I make money. It can also just be for like, oh, I have to be on my grind because I'm a hashtag influencer or whatever thing. There's a lot of reasons people do it, but just learning to be comfortable with, oh, I can't do that right now.
[55:21] - Speaker 3
I guess I'll go play Animal Crossing then Saturday.
[55:25] - Speaker 4
Even without the ADHD, you definitely deal with Burnout. I mean, I've literally watched you do it.
[55:31] - Speaker 1
Yeah. And the funny thing is, the one that just happened was probably the only one I would consider like, my real one. I am very used to having unlimited spoons. Like, just I wake up, I have completely unlimited energy, and I can do whatever I want. I can push as hard as I want. I can go to sleep and do it all over again. And I'm 37. That has been my life until COVID. And then the way COVID started was you lose access to your family, you lose access to your gym and your dog dies.
[56:04] - Speaker 1
It was like everything that was like, all the pillars for my mental health. The only one was left was like, I get to still make art. And I'm very fortunate that I live with two people, and it just completely kicked the shit out of me. And I was like, I did the dissociation thing. I did the grieving thing. I was unable to make art consistently for the first time in my life. It was really weird. I lost a bunch of patrons for it. It was just a grind.
[56:36] - Speaker 1
It was so hard. And honestly, I don't think I really started coming out of it until September of this year. It was a long time that it kind of affected me really, almost daily. And I think the thing that really helped was me recognizing that I never give myself quality rest anymore. I'm always on my phone or kind of not. I was never doing one thing. I was never just watching a movie or I was never just going for a walk with my dog or something like that.
[57:11] - Speaker 1
And the other thing is that I was neglecting time. That wasn't, like going back to the capitalist mindset. I was not letting myself play because it wasn't worth it. And then I was like, no, it's really worth it. I need to actually make art for myself.
[57:31] - Speaker 4
Was it Do Nothing book? Was it the Do Nothing book that.
[57:34] - Speaker 1
Really, like, the Do Nothing book came at a great time. And we're definitely going to do a whole episode on the Do Nothing book because it was funny. I sat down after Dragon Khan, and I was like, I am miserable, and I got through DragonCon, and that was my goal. And now that I'm done with this convention, I need to address this hot mess that I have gotten myself in. So I wrote down.
[58:02] - Speaker 4
Wake up at eight.
[58:03] - Speaker 1
And then, like, 910, 1112, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, this is what you're doing at each of those times. And I scheduled in twice the amount of rest that I normally ever would have. And then I was like, okay, these are the times that you're actually going to rest. And these are the times that you're actually going to, like, hard stop at the end of the day. These are the times that you're definitely going to be at the gym lifting weights and just listening to loud music.
[58:30] - Speaker 1
And that was super helpful. And I did that for, like, two weeks. And then I got introduced to the book.
[58:38] - Speaker 4
It's Celeste Headley. If people are looking for it, it's called Do Nothing by Celeste Headley.
[58:42] - Speaker 1
And it's an amazing book and reading that I was like, oh, this is almost exactly the thing that I was doing. Except she spent years doing research and doing it better than me. So now I can start to incorporate that.
[58:57] - Speaker 3
He works straight again.
[59:01] - Speaker 1
It's been getting better. I've been feeling a lot better.
[59:10] - Speaker 2
Because, like, we were talking about before that capitalist mindset, if you're not doing anything, then you're losing money or whatever. If you have a hard time with that one kind of mental trick that I've used to trick myself, is that like, no, you're still producing because what you're doing by resting is making sure you can produce. So you're actually still using your time wisely.
[59:36] - Speaker 4
It's like when the person told you to put exercise on your yes on your schedule.
[59:42] - Speaker 1
Yeah, that was the first time I went to a therapist, I'm a big time workaholic problem, and I was talking to her, and I was like, yeah, I'm almost 40. So I was like, yeah, I've had her knees and I've got aches and pains, and I used to go to the gym. And now I don't because I have to work. And I just started my business and she's, like, just add your workout to your to do list. And I was like, what? And she's like, now it's part of your work day.
[01:00:13] - Speaker 1
So if to you want, check off everything on their work day to do list, which is very sacred to me. Then you have to go to the gym.
[01:00:24] - Speaker 2
That's genius.
[01:00:27] - Speaker 1
I can't even handle this right now. And then I've been going to the gym consistently for three years now. Wow, that works. Yeah. I'm even going to the gym enough that I'm starting to get cocky, like, oh, man, maybe I want slightly bigger biceps and stuff. It helped so much. It was great. But I guess you have to find, like, you folks were saying, you have to find the thing that clicks with you, and then that goes so far.
[01:00:57] - Speaker 2
And you have to be willing to try stuff and fail at it. And so, like, finding productivity tools that work for you a lot of times. It's a process of finding a bunch of things that don't work before you find the one that does reject all the things until you happen to stumble upon, embrace the process.
[01:01:21] - Speaker 3
I encourage people to suck at stuff regularly. I do it all the time.
[01:01:25] - Speaker 4
I've tried a ton of productivity stuff, and the thing that works the best for me is a magnetic whiteboard on my desk where I can see it. It's the simplest solution, and it's the one thing directly in front of my face is what works best for me. We forget to look. You know, sometimes.
[01:01:51] - Speaker 2
I saw a post a while back that talked about our problem with object permanence, and so out of sight, out of mind is poison for us, because out of sight, out of mind, we'll forget it's there. It doesn't exist anymore. It's gone. So having things be visually, being able to see things like being able to see your whiteboard is a great way to deal with distraction and forgetting about stuff.
[01:02:15] - Speaker 4
And the worst part about that one for me is people because I have so many friends that I care about. And I'll be like, I haven't talked to you in four years. People that I was best friends with in high school. I will go months and months at a time without talking to them. It's like, Did I forget they exist? No, I didn't forget they exist until I see their face on Facebook. Or I see a horse and think, oh, my God, she loves horses. It's like whole entire people just aren't there until they are.
[01:02:51] - Speaker 4
And then it's like they never left.
[01:02:53] - Speaker 2
Yeah.
[01:02:56] - Speaker 4
That makes me feel like a bad friend.
[01:03:00] - Speaker 2
But I think if you have enough people in your life that are neuro divergent, I understand the narrow divergent kind of tendency towards that. It can be really helpful because it's like you do get those rhythms of like, I've forgotten that you're a person in my life. But even if we haven't talked for, like, 18 months, the minute that we do get to hang out or talk, it's like, oh, it's like we never left.
[01:03:25] - Speaker 4
Yeah. And I think for me it's like, at this point, I almost have an excuse because I'm quote, So busy people know that I'm running two businesses and I have a kid, and it's like they're kind of just like, I feel like even the people who don't understand the neuro divergent part are just like, you're very busy.
[01:03:40] - Speaker 3
We get that.
[01:03:41] - Speaker 4
But that's like, admirable in, like, people look at that as like a badge of honor. Yeah. And I'm sitting here thinking like, I just feel like I could be less of a jerk.
[01:03:55] - Speaker 3
Something I found really helpful for that, in particular, is just messaging apps like Discord, which I always have open, because then all of my little friends are right here, and I have their little icons. And if they flip down the list too far. But generally speaking, I find that really helpful because I always have it open just to, like, I talked to my wife on Discord when she's across the house because I don't like text message.
[01:04:21] - Speaker 2
I do the same thing with mine.
[01:04:23] - Speaker 3
Yeah. And also I realized that because I always have Discord open. That was the place where I should put my Todo list. And so now I have Discord number, which is just me. And I have a bunch of sub channels that are just like your projects. This is where I put outfits that I want to draw anime characters.
[01:04:43] - Speaker 2
Wearing discord is your Trello board. Yeah.
[01:04:47] - Speaker 3
Basically, I use it exactly like that because I tried Trello, and I was like, this isn't working for me because I have to go open Trello. I was like, wait a minute. I already have Discord. It's open it's right here. Someone on Tumblr suggested doing that. And I found that very helpful. And it also works as a final transfer tool when I do my product photography, because I do it on my phone.
[01:05:07] - Speaker 4
You just upload it to the discord.
[01:05:08] - Speaker 2
Go to your computer.
[01:05:09] - Speaker 4
Pick it up there.
[01:05:10] - Speaker 3
It is brilliant. I have so many channels in here. It is very helpful. I have an address book. It's the only address book I've ever kept up with. So make a discord server. And then you won't have ADHD anymore.
[01:05:23] - Speaker 1
Probably advice. But actually, this is perfect because one of the questions was all the tools you utilize to keep track, and so you don't lose anything. So let's see. We have a whiteboard. We have discord, and then a Bullet Journal. Do you folks use anything else?
[01:05:40] - Speaker 4
I have a lot of alarms, a lot of alarm.
[01:05:45] - Speaker 2
Yes, everything goes in my Bullet Journal, and I know that there are more sophisticated tools, and there are a lot of digitized tools, and I'm an It student. So I should have something that's more technological to keep myself organized. But for me, just writing it down on paper in a book that I carry with me everywhere is the best way for me to keep track of things and page in every month, I have a brain dump page, which is just like a bunch of random lists or like, thoughts I have or like things to remember.
[01:06:16] - Speaker 2
And it's just a place that I can write stuff down physically, and that's what helps me remember to do stuff. It's not going to work for everybody because none of these productivity tools are going to work for everybody. But for me, Bullet Journaling has been a lifesaver. And it's also for me, a creative outlet that I don't really have to tie to monetization because there's not really a way to monetize Bullet Journaling. I mean, there are, but not in the way that I'm doing it. So I can make something that I know is pretty, and I like doing it, and it's fun.
[01:06:47] - Speaker 2
But I don't feel this push to like, Well, now you have to monetize it. Now you have to find a way to make money doing it, because the way to make money Bullet Journaling is so far removed from the way that I'm doing it that it's just a really good way for me to have something that I do just for myself. And of course, I take pictures and show people like, oh, here's my spread. Here's my design for November. This month. It's coffee is my theme, and it's got, like, Green for Starbucks and Brown for coffee.
[01:07:19] - Speaker 2
But I don't feel pressured to make it into anything that I have to tie to my livelihood.
[01:07:27] - Speaker 4
And so that's how I keep on track.
[01:07:31] - Speaker 2
And there are weeks where I'm just, like, the last week of October was just really crazy for me. And so there's, like, half a week that's just blank because I just didn't have the focus to Bullet Journal, and that's fine. It happens. But every person is going to be very I don't want to say preachy, but be very like, oh, this is the thing that works. And I can say enough. This is the thing that works for me. And this is why it works for me. But the exact way that I do Bullet Journaling is going to differ at least a little bit from anybody else's or anybody else's way of keeping on track and on task.
[01:08:11] - Speaker 2
And a lot of people, a couple of people on our podcast crew use a lot of digital apps and alarms and things that are on their phone so that they get reminders, but that doesn't work for me because I'll just ignore the reminder. I got a bunch of notifications. I'll just clear them all out. I'll look at them later. I'll never look at them later.
[01:08:34] - Speaker 4
I never dismiss a notification. I do not dismiss them.
[01:08:38] - Speaker 2
Yeah, I get overwhelmed and nuke them. It's all about what works for you. And again, be okay with trying stuff out because I tried stuff on my phone and reminders and stuff didn't work. I just nuked them and had a whole big crash of productivity because I was relying on a productivity tool that didn't work with the way that my brain is wired and the way that my executive dysfunction works and all that stuff. But writing it down sure helped. So it's completely about what works for you.
[01:09:10] - Speaker 2
And some people, like, look at my bullet Journal and see how intricate it is with all the washi tapes I use and stuff and think that is overwhelming. That is intimidating. I could never do that. I would just quit immediately. And that's legit too. I know people that just have, like, plain white notebooks and just write stuff in pencil, and it just looks like crap, and it works for them. And it's great. And I've met people that are proud of how ugly their bullet journals are because I don't use any washi tape or stickers or anything, but it works.
[01:09:40] - Speaker 2
It works really good.
[01:09:43] - Speaker 4
Definitely modifying tools. Like, Sarah, we did a thing about this, but take what works.
[01:09:48] - Speaker 1
Oh, yeah, that one's a great one.
[01:09:52] - Speaker 4
Is that up yet? I don't know if that's up yet or.
[01:09:54] - Speaker 1
Yeah, that did go up. I can tell you the date while you look for that.
[01:09:59]
Yeah.
[01:10:00] - Speaker 4
It's like somebody gives you if people will come out and say, I want some advice, what should I do? And then a bunch of people will say, here's my advice, and then people will say, oh, that doesn't work for me, because X-Y-Z, it's like, okay, but there might be part of it. There might be some part of it. So if Magsie is like, oh, Bullet journaling works really well for me. It keeps me organized. It keeps all my tasks, and somebody looks at her bullet Journal and says, I can't do that.
[01:10:23] - Speaker 4
That's too much for me, but to have the self awareness to be like, but I don't have to do it the way Maggie does it. I could do it my way, which could be simpler.
[01:10:33] - Speaker 1
I can speak to that because I am I'm the person with the ugly bullet Journal. Yeah, I've been keeping a bullet Journal for probably four or five years now, and I have a specific black pen, and I write with a black pen and the bullet Journal, and there's no decoration, art drawings, anything at all. Like, it is completely an utterly plain. I actually just switched off of that. I'm trying a new thing called Monday, which is online. So we'll see how that goes. But for my time with Bullet Journals, I was very Spartan and I loved it.
[01:11:07] - Speaker 1
It was great. It was perfect for me. And the only reason I'm switching off now is because where I started adding on more projects, like, now I'm doing the mind by the artist stuff here. And also I have clients, which there could be multiple ones. And I have a personal project. I wanted to be able to tag things. So being like using Monday, you can add a tag. So I can be like, personal art. And one of the things I'm trying to do with the self care thing is to make sure I at least have some of those in the week.
[01:11:38] - Speaker 1
So it's not just a straight grind of only work. So I'm trying with this tagging thing. And so far it's been pretty good. But before that, when my life was slightly simpler, Bullet Journal was spot on for me. I loved it.
[01:11:54] - Speaker 2
Bullet Journaling is actually a really good example of taking productivity tools and keeping what works. Because if you read the original Bullet Journal method, the book which I highly recommend, it's really good. It's pretty short. But if you read what the original Bullet Journaling method was, everybody that does Bullet Journaling has taken it and made it their own. And so, like I said, no, two Bullet Journaling methods are going to be the same, but they're also diversified from the original method of Bullet Journaling. And so I think that's a good example of how you take these productivity tools and make them work with the way that your brain is wired, especially if you are neuro divergent.
[01:12:36] - Speaker 3
Yeah, in terms of taking what works too. Like I've tried Bullet Journaling, but what works for me is writing things down. So I just write it on sticky notes and I stick them on my computer monitor.
[01:12:46] - Speaker 4
My God, the sticky notes. Yeah, I have the whiteboard. But then each day I make like, a today list and anything I don't get done. Like if it gets done on the today list, I take it off the whiteboard if it doesn't get done and it wasn't already on the whiteboard on the whiteboard, it goes clever.
[01:13:06] - Speaker 3
Yeah, I do all my appointments on sticky notes, and I'll take notes about the address and the costs and stuff whenever I'm on the phone making the appointment because I have sticky notes everywhere in my office, just like pads of them in case I have something I need to write down, which is part of making your workspace easy to do, the things that you need to do.
[01:13:32] - Speaker 2
For me. Sticky notes, like the minute I've tried that too, the minute I put them on my computer monitor. Now they are a part of the computer monitor. They are drafted to the environment and I don't even see it.
[01:13:43] - Speaker 3
I have to be careful about that what I've started doing is I put them on. I have three monitors. One of them is a tablet. But then I have two other monitors. I switch which monitors I put them on so that it doesn't become too permanent in the display. I'm like, okay, this appointment is on this one, but this one's on the other one. And the next time I have to put an appointment up, who knows where I mix up where I put it. So it does not become a part of the clutter.
[01:14:09] - Speaker 3
And I don't lose track of it because I'm just like, Well, I don't see that anymore. My brain has decided we're just not looking at it forever.
[01:14:17] - Speaker 4
You guys have me literally pulling off sticky notes right now and going.
[01:14:21] - Speaker 1
Oh, I did that.
[01:14:21] - Speaker 4
I can take that one down.
[01:14:26] - Speaker 2
This kind of highlights one way in that our ADHD brains can be extremely contradictory because I was talking before about how we don't have object permanence, and so out of sight, out of mind is a bad thing. But then if things are right in front of our face and they're there for too long, they become part of the environment, and it becomes grafted to the environment, and you can't interact with it anymore.
[01:14:52] - Speaker 4
Did you see my tweet about the ribbon yesterday?
[01:14:55] - Speaker 2
Yeah, that you had, like, a bunch of ribbon fall down and you're like, oh, I remember this ribbon.
[01:14:59] - Speaker 4
I can see the ribbon. It's directly in front of me on my case next to my desk. And I found a ribbon while I was putting those ribbons back up, and I was like, I like this ribbon, but it's in the purples, and it's just been in the purples. And when I go look for a purple, I just don't see that one because it's amongst all the other purples. But that one's cool. And now every time I look at the shelf, I'm like, I got to use that.
[01:15:22] - Speaker 2
Yeah, I think that's one thing that people who are newly realizing that they have ADHD, or if you have a loved one that has ADHD, and you're trying to kind of understand their brain can be really frustrating because you just said that things have to be in front of you. You can't see it now. You're saying that if they're in front of you, you can't see them. Which one is it's both. And it's highly situational, and it's weird and bad. And, look, I'm frustrated, too. And that's why I stress patience.
[01:15:56] - Speaker 2
It's so hard to learn patience, and I'm still learning it. I think anybody that says, oh, I've learned patience just means I've come far in learning patience, but I'm still learning it so patience with yourself and to a degree, patience with those around you. And again, I say that, but I take that with a grain of salt.
[01:16:17] - Speaker 4
Because as I said.
[01:16:18] - Speaker 2
I'm very critical of a lot of ADHD support material online, because again, moderation and not all or nothing. It's very messy and very confusing and very frustrating. And it's okay. It's okay that it's those things just chill out and we'll figure this out together.
[01:16:39] - Speaker 1
Super helpful. Okay. I think to wrap up, we have kind of like the beginning and ending of each project. These questions are kind of like, how do you keep from starting a million projects and not finishing them? And then on the flip side of that, it's how do you know when to call a project finish and not stop procrastinating on it by adding and adding more finishing touches? Okay.
[01:17:09] - Speaker 2
I'll start with, how do you stop yourself from starting a million projects? I tend to do that a lot. And that's been something that I've had in the past few years have had to curb. And a lot of times, if I get the idea of, oh, I want to do this new project, I will write it down and sit on it for a while, like, maybe a few days. And if I still really want to do this project, then I'll think about starting it and not give in to that impulsive.
[01:17:41] - Speaker 2
Like, oh, I want to do this right now. It doesn't always work, but it works, like, 60% of the time. So it's like a D, which is still passing, but it's really difficult to not give into that indulgent. I want to do this thing right now because when you first started a project, you're all full of inspiration and you're getting a ton and ton of dopamine that our brains aren't as good at managing or producing as neurotypical brains are. And so you're really just kind of on that dopamine high of like, this feels good.
[01:18:14] - Speaker 2
This feels right. I'm so excited. But then the minute you start it and you get, like, maybe a quarter of the way into a project like this. Ok. The dopamine has worn off now and now. This is just a mess. And as we are speaking, I'm looking at a bunch of unfinished dice bags that my wife and I started and we have been working on, but we definitely started it with that. Oh, this is so cool. We're going to make so many dice bags, and then they're all, like, half finished and none of them are listed.
[01:18:41] - Speaker 2
Okay. So it's okay to have those moments. They're going to happen. Just accept it. But do your best to curb them and try to sit on them for a while and see if that desire to do a project is still there in some amount of time, a couple of days, a couple of hours, whatever it is. And if it is, then take it slow. Don't jump into it because it's going to be a mess. And it's fine. It's all fine.
[01:19:12] - Speaker 4
Diana, how about you?
[01:19:14] - Speaker 3
In my case, I do a lot of community regulation. As I said before, I'm a collaborator, and it's a project that is bigger than something I can do in 1 hour. I will generally go to my friends who have skill sets related to it and tell them the idea and see if they want to do it. And if they're not enthusiastic about it, it kills my enthusiasm, enthusiasm for it. And then I'm done.
[01:19:40] - Speaker 4
Well, that was like the market this year. Diana and I ran a little art market last December, and it was really cute. It was like, 20 artists, and it was just an online thing, and it was fun. And it might not have been super profitable for everybody, but it was a good time. And we were like, this year, we're like, oh, we want to run it again. I never would have been like, I'm going to do this again. But Diana was like, we should run this again.
[01:20:03] - Speaker 4
You want to run it? And I'm like, you know, sure.
[01:20:07] - Speaker 3
Yeah. And now we're doing it, and we have most of the groundwork laid. We're just waiting for your bow event to be done. So yeah, I think that'll be fun. And just in terms of when I don't have a community regulation outlet for something, I don't know anyone who's good at what I want to do. I have an idea Jar server in my discord, and I put it in there and I do some research and put a bunch of links in there. And then I closed that discord window.
[01:20:37] - Speaker 3
I moved to a different area of my server and go to my DMs instead. And then generally, within an hour, I've forgotten about it. And if I come back to it and I want to do it, that's awesome. I like having lots of hobbies. I just bought two antique music boxes to modify.
[01:20:55] - Speaker 4
I thought that you're doing this.
[01:20:57] - Speaker 3
Yeah.
[01:20:58] - Speaker 2
It's really cool.
[01:20:59] - Speaker 3
It happens because the Anastasia replica music boxes are out of stock everywhere. Like, they don't make them this year. And so they're going for a lot of ebay. And I was like, whoever figured out how to do those, if someone figured out how to make replicas, they can make a lot of money.
[01:21:14] - Speaker 4
And I was like.
[01:21:14] - Speaker 3
I don't want to do that. But I wonder what it takes to make a music box. And then a day later, I have all these antique music boxes, and I'm like, Well, I'm going to glue stuff to these until they're this, like, I'm making a Princess. Two, two, one because I found Walt of the Flowers music boxes. It's like, perfect. And maybe I can put if they don't super suck. I'll put them up for auction at amazement this year because they do, like, a little auction area or something.
[01:21:40] - Speaker 3
Or I'll just keep them for me and look at them. Sometimes it's fun to just let yourself get carried away on an idea. But that's how I don't get carried away by all of my ideas, because I have so many of them is the thing I think for me.
[01:21:56] - Speaker 4
The answer to this is the same as the hyper fixation is that I just avoid additional activities. Okay. You guys a lot of people listening, and you guys know that I collect Salem and merch, so that's like, a hobby. That's not monetized that I do. And so for me, it's like the merch piles up and it becomes like a big pile. And then I'm like, oh, I have to put this away. So I have, like, a day where I, like, do all Sailor Moon stuff, but I can't keep doing it because I'm out of things.
[01:22:28] - Speaker 4
Like, I put all the things away. So that task is like an indulgence, but it ends because I did the thing. So I'm in it. I'm enjoying it while I'm in it. But it has a finite. And as far as ideas for projects, I just make bows. Sometimes I guess what will happen is I'll get an idea you like, remember Diana? I did that, like, one bow hangar.
[01:22:56]
Yeah.
[01:22:57] - Speaker 4
I made a bow hanger, and people loved it and wanted it. And I probably would make more. But it's not allure when I'm happy doing the thing I'm doing.
[01:23:10]
Yeah.
[01:23:10] - Speaker 4
Like, even just me remembering to make Cascades, which is a slightly different hairbow. Just remembering to do that slight version difference is effort because I have to be like, oh, right. That other thing. So I think my project creep. I feel like it doesn't happen as much because I just have, like, what I'm doing is such a lure that I like, those things aren't powerful enough.
[01:23:39] - Speaker 3
You found the thing that you like to hyper focus on the most.
[01:23:43] - Speaker 4
Yeah. And I'm so deep into it that, like, everything else pales in comparison until I picked up Animal Crossing again. And now it's a thing. Yeah.
[01:23:54] - Speaker 2
Kind of. On that note, I find that my impulsivity to start new things is especially bad when the project I'm working on or whatever I'm doing becomes really difficult. So I'll just use my podcast as an example when we have a lot of things we need to get done, and none of them are particularly engaging. A lot of them are just kind of grinding things that we need to get done. Suddenly, my brain is like, we need to start a new hobby. Have we thought about dice making in a while?
[01:24:26] - Speaker 2
We should get into that. And I'm like, brain. No, we don't have the space. We don't have the money to buy the equipment. And my brain is like, yeah, but we could. And having ADHD is a lot like having to be your own parent and having a parent yourself. And, like you were saying, Diana, kind of crowdsourcing to manage these sorts of things. A lot of times I will recognize I'm having this desire to suddenly get into dice making and resin work and whatever. And it's because I'm overwhelmed with what I'm doing right now.
[01:24:59] - Speaker 2
It's because there are chores piling up, and I have a ton of homework to do for school and a ton of podcast stuff that I have to get done. And suddenly my brain is like, we need a release valve so that we get the dopamine that we need. And so I'll say that I'll talk to Chris, my wife and be like, hey, we should get into dice making, and they'll look at me like, no, we can't do that. It wouldn't be the voice of reason. And they also have ADHD.
[01:25:27] - Speaker 2
And so they can recognize, like, this is just your ADHD trying to find that release valve, and it sucks. But that's just a distraction. And I do the same thing with them. They'll also get these ideas. We both get influenced a lot by, like, whatever YouTube we're watching. And last year, at one point, my wife marathon everything by Bernard At Banner. And suddenly they were like, I want to make clothes. I'm going to make a whole new wardrobe for myself. And I'm like, Babe, we can't do that.
[01:25:58] - Speaker 2
We don't have the time or the money to do that. And they're like, oh, yeah. You're right. Okay. Well, I'll just live vicariously through YouTubers.
[01:26:06] - Speaker 4
You know what got me this time? I had no intention of picking up Animal Crossing again, and a friend was like, hey, I need to get rid of my switch because of reasons. Do you guys want to buy it really cheap and you can just have all my games, and I'll give you a couple of controllers or whatever. I just want to get rid of it. And I was like, oh, I could play Animal Crossing on my own island all by myself without my tyrant child. Oh, yeah, I'm going to do that.
[01:26:34] - Speaker 4
And it was wild.
[01:26:37]
So.
[01:26:39] - Speaker 4
Like, it's the meanest thing you can do to someone with ADHD is like, dangle something shiny in front of them.
[01:26:45] - Speaker 2
Yeah. And then you're like.
[01:26:47] - Speaker 4
And you're like, I was very focused on everything I had to be doing. And now I'm a little distracted.
[01:26:56] - Speaker 2
Yes. Animal Crossing is wonderful and horrible.
[01:27:04] - Speaker 4
We all have the same disease.
[01:27:08] - Speaker 2
We could probably do a whole episode on why Animal Crossing is wonderful and horrible, but it feeds us properly. Anyway. I won't get into it. But you all know that's awesome.
[01:27:24] - Speaker 1
So I think that was the last of our questions.
[01:27:28] - Speaker 2
We didn't address how we finish projects, though, without noodling them to death.
[01:27:33] - Speaker 4
You're right.
[01:27:34] - Speaker 2
Yes.
[01:27:35] - Speaker 1
The noodling. Yes. Can we talk about anti noodling procedures?
[01:27:41] - Speaker 2
The best advice I can give for that is the old saying in the print industry is you will not finish. You will just run out of time. And like, on Halloween, we started releasing our Curse of Straw Game. And Chris, who does all the mixing, did a fantastic job with all of the Foley and the producing of that episode. But they kept going back and kept adding things and kept getting more feedback of like, oh, I think you should change this. I think you should change this.
[01:28:21] - Speaker 2
And we just ran out of time. And so it had to be done and being able to just be like, okay, it's not perfect, but we're out of time. And even if you don't have a hard deadline, giving yourself a deadline like, this is how much time you have to do this thing.
[01:28:39] - Speaker 4
I have to do that I have to give myself deadlines.
[01:28:42] - Speaker 2
Because if I don't, I will noodle, it to death, and I will never finish it. And it's difficult. But if you give yourself a deadline or if you have a deadline, then you kind of give yourself permission to never finish. You'll just run out of time.
[01:29:00] - Speaker 3
In my case, I actually don't really have this problem. So I don't know if my advice will be particularly helpful, though. I did find switching from doing my art digitally to working mostly on paper help because there's a point where you can no longer rework a physical thing.
[01:29:18] - Speaker 2
The paper will not accept any more ink. You are finished.
[01:29:23] - Speaker 3
It's either start over or just accept that. It's just okay, and you're not happy with it. But I have always kind of been in the boat of when I get bored of something, which is usually before it's finished, then I have no desire to be a perfectionist about it. I have always been fairly laze fair, pretty laid back when it comes to perfectionism. So your mileage may vary with my take Compass.
[01:29:50] - Speaker 2
But once I'm bored, it's done.
[01:29:52] - Speaker 3
Yeah, I'm bored of this art piece. I'll finish it because I want it to be done, and then I'll finish it as quickly as possible and be like, all right, I'm moving on with my life.
[01:30:02] - Speaker 4
Bye.
[01:30:03] - Speaker 2
That sounds wonderful. I should try to implement that.
[01:30:06] - Speaker 4
This is really interesting, because when I used to make plushies, it's like a 40, 60 hours thing, right?
[01:30:14] - Speaker 3
Yeah.
[01:30:14] - Speaker 4
And so you'd start the plushie. You're stoked about it. You can't wait to see how this character is going to look. You get the body together, and I got to make the clothes.
[01:30:22] - Speaker 2
You got to do.
[01:30:22] - Speaker 4
The face like, that middle of the project was always just like, oh, my God. I just have to keep working. I'll get through this, and then you get towards the end and you can kind of see it coming together.
[01:30:32] - Speaker 2
And you're like, oh.
[01:30:32] - Speaker 4
This is going to look so great. I'm so excited. Blah, blah, blah. So you have this high at the beginning.
[01:30:37] - Speaker 2
Low in the middle where you're like.
[01:30:39] - Speaker 4
I hate my life. Why am I even doing this? And then you get to the end and you're like, it's done. It's finished. I am awesome. Whatever. Right.
[01:30:47] - Speaker 2
Can't we just start the next one? Right.
[01:30:49] - Speaker 4
And so I realized I was in that cycle. So the way I dealt with that is that now I only make things that take, like, an hour or two. I stopped drawing intricately, detailed, beautiful colored pencil work and started just drawing Chibi because it was an immediate satisfaction gratification. And it doubled in that it felt good to crank out a lot of art fast, and I could sell more of them. So it was like a double feedback loop. People were buying them. I was making them quickly.
[01:31:23] - Speaker 4
I got quicker at making them, the more I made them. And so now with the bows, it might take me a whole day to make, like, a big, fancy bow. But that's it. It's just the day, and I never lose interest. It never wanes. It's the high. Like, I've got an idea. I can't wait to see how this looks. This is coming together. Oh, I can see how it's going to be. And it's done. There's no low. There's no time for a low.
[01:31:50] - Speaker 3
Yeah. I also have to keep my project very short. If it's something I'm working on solar for the same reason. It's, like, sustained effort. In that way, I could not make one plushie. That's why I never got into cosplay. I'm like, that takes 20 hours to make a jacket. I'm going to die.
[01:32:09] - Speaker 4
There's an artist out there who wants to write a comic, like a long, in depth, full length, like, super awesome, intricately detailed, amazing story with all this stuff.
[01:32:18] - Speaker 2
Blah, blah, blah.
[01:32:19] - Speaker 4
But their brain just might not switching format and being like, I want to build up these characters on this story, but I'm going to do it in, like, four panels a week or whatever. Sometimes you just have to. It's going back to those tiny bites, like letting yourself do the small bit.
[01:32:39] - Speaker 3
Yeah. And you don't have to only do those things. You can mix it up, do some things that are longer, some things that are shorter. When you need a quick hit, just find what works for you.
[01:32:52] - Speaker 4
Sarah. After listening to this, what are your thoughts right now?
[01:32:58] - Speaker 3
Do you have ADHD?
[01:33:02] - Speaker 1
The funny thing is, I'm going to have to put something in the beginning of this that every human I think should listen to this talk because I found various responses from all of you. I was like, oh, that would help in this area of my life, and that would help in this area of my life. I heard something like accessibility. One of my friends was saying, if you make something accessible, it's better for the entire population. So you folks are dealing with some brain things that I can't even fathom, but you figured them out.
[01:33:54] - Speaker 1
You can speak on it. So now I can take essentially you're like, all right, I have a giant machete, and I'm like, oh, but I need a kitchen knife, and you're like, Well, here's how you use your giant machete. And I'm like, and when I need a kitchen knife, I'll clearly know how to use it. It's like you're dealing with something way more severe than I do. So when I have something tiny, I'm like, oh, wow. I could already use this good advice over here. So I found this to be super educating and really, really helpful.
[01:34:23] - Speaker 3
Actually, listening to disabled and neurodivergent voices is very helpful, even if it's not something you deal with personally, because a lot of the advice is broadly applicable. Like you were saying, when you make something more accessible for a particular community, it also just becomes more accessible to everyone. And that is a net positive for society. So Crunchyroll should put his closed captions back on the service for English language and talk.
[01:34:52] - Speaker 1
I love fake captions.
[01:34:53] - Speaker 4
Yeah, that's wild.
[01:34:59] - Speaker 3
Yeah.
[01:35:00] - Speaker 4
Here we are.
[01:35:01] - Speaker 1
Yeah, that was awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show. And I mean, that's the end of our questions. But if you have anything else like you want to bring up kind of last minute like, oh, don't forget this. We've got time. We have as much time as you have time.
[01:35:17] - Speaker 2
Go ahead, Diana.
[01:35:19] - Speaker 3
No, I was just going to say that I'm pretty much set, and I actually do need to head off soon here. So if we can wrap it up, that would be awesome.
[01:35:25]
Great.
[01:35:25] - Speaker 2
Okay. I have one quick comment at the end. As I said, I am extremely critical of a lot of ADHD kind of support material online. I think a lot of it is actually detrimental because a lot of it in my experience, just says here's why I can't do stuff and kind of leaves it at that. I understand that a lot of it is ADHD people that are making these content, just trying to kind of vent and express their frustration with the way that their brains are working and how society is built in how those two things are incompatible at times.
[01:36:07] - Speaker 2
But it does make it very frustrating because I've seen those materials. There's one comic in particular which I won't name, but there's one comic in particular that shows up a lot that every time I see it, I'm just like, no, because it just here's why I can't do stuff and leaves it at that. And that is very frustrating to me. And the one source that I have seen consistently not doing that. That actually says here's why my brain doesn't want to do the thing or here's why I have trouble with this.
[01:36:34] - Speaker 2
And here's how to fix it. Here's how to circumvent. It is a channel on YouTube. I cannot recommend her enough called how to ADHD. And we talked about her a little bit. She's fantastic, and she does a lot with here's coping strategies. And here's how to ADHD, how to be someone who has ADHD in a society that is not built to cater to ADHD people. And so I would encourage everyone one to go check out her channel and also be more critical of understanding that. Yes, we do have this disability or this condition.
[01:37:12] - Speaker 2
And it is frustrating. But we also live in a collaborative and social society, and so one person's inability to do something does affect what other people have to do, and so be cognizant of that because I feel like it can lead to a lot of toxicity and learn helplessness. So it's again a balancing act, and it's a lot of learning moderation and compromise. Like I said, everything for us is going to be difficult. It's going to be more difficult just because of how society is built and how our brains work.
[01:37:51] - Speaker 2
And that's okay. And the sooner that you kind of realize that the sooner things start getting paradoxically, start getting easier. So that would be my one point is to be more critical or keep a critical eye when it comes to support materials online and try to avoid falling into the trap of being self pitying.
[01:38:11] - Speaker 4
That's great advice.
[01:38:13] - Speaker 1
That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. This is amazing. I learned a ton, and I'm going to actually be taking some of the stuff I learned here today and implementing it in my own life for sure.
[01:38:24] - Speaker 4
Definitely cool.
[01:38:26] - Speaker 2
Yeah.
[01:38:26] - Speaker 1
I really appreciate you folks spending the time with us.
[01:38:30] - Speaker 2
Thank you for having us.
[01:38:32] - Speaker 1
No problem. Well, I know Diana has to get going, so let's just wrap up real quick. So thank you again. And for all you folks who are listening to this podcast, I hope you enjoyed it. And we'll have a look. Another one coming up on the first and 15th of every month. So we'll talk to you later. Hope you make good art.
[01:38:49] - Speaker 4
Bye.
[01:38:50] - Speaker 2
Bye. Bye.
❤️
Sarah, Sarah, Megzie, and Diana
Discussed by Sarah Dahlinger, Sarah Forde, Lois van Baarle aka Loish